I started the fire in my kiln yesterday at about noon. I will be firing this time all by my lonesome so I took the burner off my kerosene kiln and have put it to work for when I have to sleep.

At this point the temperatures are 180 C. in room one, room two, 80 C. , Room one is closest to the fire box. It is about -3 C. outside.

I plan on finishing on either Sunday or Monday. I have to go slower than usual since I have to sleep and during that time the only thing watching the kiln will be my burner.

The burner is off my Shimpo kiln. The Shimpo holds 6 shelves that are about 30cm. by 25cm. My nobori holds, this time, 90 shelves that are 35 cm. by 40 cm. I am very interested to see if the burner will hold the temperature while I have it in use.

My schedule this time is designed to get around the problems I have encountered in the few times I have tried to fire by myself. The main problem is fatigue. Physical fatigue in the form of muscle cramps and tiredness. Mental fatigue is a small problem but I can usually get around that with small projects I set to do. This time I have had to do some cleaning up around the kiln and I plan to make a table out of some extra wood. To get around the physical fatigue I plan to work 12-13 hours and then put the burner in.

I also have pictures of my newly reconstructed chimney. I still have a steel water pipe topping it off. I had to redo the upper 1/3. The kiln is drying out and that is steam, not smoke coming out of it.

I was at a market in Nara all day Sunday. The place is called Akishino-no-mori, the person running it is the dragon business woman who runs a restaurant named Kuruminoki. She has converted a run-down pension into a very nice oasis of green in the middle of the Gakuenmae area of Nara. The white balance wasn’t set so the picture color is off.